


Coming Home to a Place You've Never Been

by ingie



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-28
Updated: 2012-08-28
Packaged: 2017-11-13 02:28:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/498444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ingie/pseuds/ingie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Suki tries to find a place on the South Pole, while tensions rise between the returned warriors and the Northern tribesfolk who came to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Home to a Place You've Never Been

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Phantom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phantom/gifts).



She knew that it would be cold, of course, but even so, Suki isn’t prepared for the complete, bone-gnawing cold of the South Pole. It amazes her that some of the warmest people she’s ever met could come from such a desolate, freezing cold place.

She’s trying not to show it as she huddles underneath the parka Katara gave her, trying to ignore the biting wind. Katara has gone with Aang to look for a place where he can begin to rebuild the Airbender culture, and she gave Suki some of her own warm clothing. Suki is grateful for it, but can’t help but think that it’s just not warm enough. She has begun to regret that she didn’t go back with the other Kyoshi warriors, but decided to come with Sokka to see his home first.

Sokka comes up to her. “We’re almost ready to disembark the ship now,” he says. “We’ll be taking the smaller canoes up to the village.” He pulls her hood up. “Here, wear this. If your head is covered, you’ll keep warmer.”

“Great,” Suki says with as much enthusiasm as she can muster. 

Sokka looks at her for a long moment, before muttering something under his breath and digging in his pocket. He pulls out a small bag with meat jerky, and gives her a piece. “Eat,” he says.

Suki shakes her head. “I’m not hungry.”

Sokka frowns. “You should be. The cold robs you of strength, and your body needs more energy just to keep warm. If you’re not ravenous, your body’s shutting down. Eat.”

Suki takes the jerky but doesn’t eat it, until Sokka lifts her head so he can look into her eyes and says, quietly, “Please?”

She takes a bite, forces herself to chew and swallow. After finishing the strip of jerky she finds that she’s hungry after all, and she readily accepts it when Sokka hands her another piece. He smiles at her and pulls her into a hug. Even through their thick cloting, she can feel the heat from his body. She’s still cold, but no longer unbearably so.

*****  
The village is _tiny_.

Suki looks around, and her trained warrior’s eyes tell her much. The village people are mostly women and children, and many of the adults are elderly. No matter their age, though, they all seem a little stooped. These are people who’ve suffered.

One group of people look different, and from the way they greet Pakku she guesses that these are the people who came from the northern Water Tribe to help rebuild. There are defenses, but they look new. She shudders to think what it looked like before the northern tribesfolk came to help.

Sokka gives a happy shout and rushes to embrace an elderly woman. Suki can see the resemblance to Katara in the wrinkled face and, from the way Pakku looks like he’s waiting his turn to greet her, guesses that this must be Kanna, the woman Sokka fondly refers to as Gran-Gran. 

Someone comes up behind her, and Suki suppresses the instinct to whirl and have the man on the ground in a second because she knows that there are no enemies here. A broad hand covers her shoulder, and then Hakoda says softly, “Come. Let’s introduce you to her.”

Suki hesitates, but Sokka has separated from his grandmother now and is looking at Suki expectantly. The old woman is also looking, and her face has crinkled further in a warm smile. Suki registers from the corner of her eye that Pakku has turned half-way away, seemingly resigned that he has to wait even longer for his turn. He’s…yes, the old, powerful water master is almost _pouting_.

That breaks the tension. Suki smothers her giggle and walks over to meet the last member of her boyfriend’s family.

*****  
As the days go on, she begins to get used to the cold. The igloos are surprisingly comfortable, and while she was quite embarrassed to curl up next to Sokka to sleep wearing almost nothing at first with his father and grandmother (and Grand-Pakku) in the same room, she soon becomes used to it – sleeping close together and skin to skin is simply the best way of staying warm. She remembers how much the group hugged when they were all together. She’d asked Aang about it, and he said that it just happened that way – he wasn’t used to all the hugging either. Now, she thinks that it’s simply something that Sokka and Katara were used to because physical closeness is something that’s a way of life here on the South Pole.

Because of that, however, it becomes all the more noticeable when some people avoid one another. It seems like the newcomers from the northern tribe have become used to being the only ones not exhausted and downtrodden in the village, and with the return of the warriors they’re thrown off balance. Pakku, Hakoda and Sokka have to break up confrontations several times.

The women and children are standing up straighter as well. Suki was a little annoyed that it seemed like they needed their men before they’d stand up for themselves, but Kanna points out that it’s not quite like that.

“Before Hakoda and the warriors came back, we were all that was left of a once proud village. Pride can break you as well as make you strong, if it’s misplaced. Now our villagers have returned in force as war heroes, and two of our young were important to the Avatar’s victory, and we find that our pride wasn’t misplaced after all.” The old woman sighs. “Pakku came before me, knowing that he’d driven me away once before, so he was suitably humble. All of his tribesfolk, though, only remembered the grandness of the northern fortress, and saw our miserable little village, and let that get to their heads. They’re all waterbenders, and while some of our children have shown some talent, there’s no Katara here to show what the southern tribe is good for.” 

Suki thinks about that as she and Sokka leave the village so she can practice walking in snowshoes. She’s already mastered it – warrior training since she was young means that she catches on to anything physical very fast – but Sokka needs an excuse to get out of the village for some time.

She doesn’t say anything, just waits until Sokka breaks the silence.

“It’s just so frustrating,” he says. “We were bled out by the Fire Nation. They took our benders, our warriors left, and we had to survive – and we did! That’s pretty good in itself, right?”

Suki looks around her at the desolate landscape. “Absolutely,” she says in agreement.

“And I _know_ that bender or not doesn’t matter that much. I mean, I did pretty well when I was hanging out with Aang and the rest, right? I pulled my own weight, didn’t I?”

Suki remembers how quickly he caught on with fighting, how he figured out how to take over the airships. She nods emphatically. “Definitely,” she says. 

“Right. So where do they get off acting so high and mighty?” Sokka kicks a lump of ice, his face stuck in a deep frown.

“Should you suggest that they leave?” Suki asks. “Pakku’s probably staying anyway, so you have someone to train new benders, and the war’s over. With you and your father and the warriors back, do you need them?”

Sokka shakes his head and sighs. “More people are always better, if we can only get along. Some of them have been talking about bringing their wives and girlfriends here. We could be a proper, big village again, if we could just get those stubborn idiots to accept each other. It’s not just the northerners who’re causing trouble.”

Suki walks over to him and pulls at his arm until he wraps it around her shoulders. They walk in silence for a moment, before Suki says: “Your grandmother told me why she left when she was young. How come Pakku changed his mind?”

And as Sokka tells her how Katara challenged the old water master, and how she lost but put up a really good fight, and Pakku was reminded of what his stubbornness had cost him before, Suki begins to formulate a plan.

*****  
In the end, it isn’t hard to find a volunteer.

*****  
Makki is one of the younger women in the tribe. She lost her husband in an early raid, before Hakoda took the warriors away to fight. When the northern men first came, she smiled a little at some of them, but stopped as they grew more openly arrogant. 

Now, as one of them approaches her, she looks at him with an openly disdainful gaze, and demonstratively turns away to talk to one of the southern warriors.

The northern bender looks at them angrily.

Sokka and Suki watch intently. They chose their players carefully. These two men have been at one others’ throats for weeks, partly because they both have had their sights set on Makki. She was grinning openly when they explained the ploy to her. 

They’re a little too far away to hear what’s being said at first, but soon voices begin to rise. The two men have progressed to insults when Pakku and Hakoda come out of the igloo.

“Great. Time to break them up again,” Hakoda sighs.

“Dad, wait,” Sokka says. “Just…wait and see.”

Hakoda gives him a skeptical look, but he stands still and waits. Pakku looks at the three people arguing, then at Sokka, then at Suki, and then at Makki who has subtly changed her posture, and he grins as he realizes what they’re up to.

Makki suddenly drops, just as the northern tribesman takes a step back to go into a position for waterbending. She catches his leg with her foot as he moves it, and he loses his balance and falls down. Then she’s up and has driven an elbow into the southern tribesman’s belly before he can say anything. She snags his boomerang from his belt and throws it, and it hits the northerner in the head on return just as he begins to get up. She grabs it and pushes it up under the nose of the southerner.

“You’re both idiots!” she exclaims, before throwing the boomerang to the ground and stalking away.

The two men, bender and warrior, look at one another, before one of them snorts and the other follows.

Soon, the whole village is laughing.

*****  
Later, Suki catches up with Makki and whispers, “you did great.”

Makki beams at her. “I had to, with all the training you and Sokka gave me. Do you think it’ll work in the long run?”

Suki smiles. “Trust me, I’m good at reading body language. The two groups are still a little uneasy around each other, but a lot of the tension is gone. I think we’ll work out fine.”

“So are you staying here?” Makki asks.

“I might leave occasionally, but I think I’ll come back,” Suki replies. “I still have some duties on Kyoshi Island, but I’ve found that I like it here.”

Makki smiles. “Well, you and Sokka can borrow my saw,” she says.

Later, when Suki asks Sokka what she meant by that, Sokka blushes crimson. After much hemming and hawing he manages to splutter out that it’s a euphemism for marriage – a couple who get married need a saw to cut out ice blocks for their own igloo.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure if this is as shippy as you'd like. Sorry. I tried my best.


End file.
